Sermons on Evil-Speaking - Softcover

“By Dr. Isaac Barrow, one of the most eminent preachers of the Restoration period. Professor Morley’s introduction to the volumes continue to be models of their kind. They furnish all the information required by the reader for understanding the work before him and its place in English literature, and the critical remarks are excellent.” -The Literary World

“Prefaced by an account of the life and character of the author.” -The Chronicle

“Isaac Barrow’s famous crusade against the loose speaking of his age, first published in 1678.” -The Bookseller

“Never more needed in England than today, and which will help the reader to understand what Lowell means when he ascribed to Theodore Parker ‘almost Barrow’s profusion, quite Latimer’s sense.’” -The American

“No man was more free than Isaac Barrow from the spirit of unkindness. The man speaks in these sermons. Yet he could hold his own in wit with the light triflers of the court of Charles the Second....Barrow’s mathematical power gave clearness to his sermons, which were full of sense and piety. They were very carefully written, copied and recopied, and now rank with the most valued pieces of the literature of the pulpit. He was deeply religious, although he had, besides learning, a lively wit, and never lost the pluck that taught him how to man a gun against a pirate. He was ‘low of stature, lean, and of a pale complexion,’ so untidy that on one occasion his appearance in the pulpit is said to have caused half the congregation to go out of church. He gave his whole mind and his whole soul to his work for God. Mythical tales are told of the length of some of his sermons, at a time when an hour’s sermon was not considered long. Of one charity-sermon the story is that it lasted three hours and a half, and that Barrow was requested to print it—“with the other half which he had not had time to deliver.” But we may take this tale as one of the quips at which Barrow himself would have laughed very good-humouredly.” -Henry Morley

CONTENTS.

Introduction by Professor Henry Morley.

Against Foolish Talking and Jesting.

Against Rash and Vain Swearing.

Of Evil-speaking in General.

The Folly of Slander. Part 1.

The Folly of Slander. Part 2.

Isaac Barrow was born in London in 1630. His father was draper to the king. His mother died when he was four years old. He was named Isaac after an uncle, who died in 1680, Bishop of St. Asaph. Young Isaac Barrow was educated at the Charterhouse School, and at Felstead, before he went, in 1643, to Cambridge. He entered first at Peterhouse, where his uncle Isaac was a Fellow, but at that time his uncle was ejected from his Fellowship for loyalty to the King’s cause, and removed to Oxford; the nephew, who entered at Cambridge, therefore avoided Peterhouse, and went to Trinity College. Young Barrow’s father also was at Oxford, where he gave up all his worldly means in service of the King.